Category: Earthquake Field Reports

This post is part of a series called 2015 Nepal Earthquake Journals
Kathmandu, Nepal – April 29, 201510:35 am
Our assessment team in Nepal so far is me, Sandeep and Manis. Sandeep Shah is from our Miyamoto India office and Manis is our Nepalese structural engineer partner. He ran one of the largest companies with 30 people in Kathmandu.
Manis drives a little red Honda through the city. The town is empty and all the stores are closed with not much action. The apartments above the stores are all vacant. The population essentially fled the town for fear of…

This post is part of a series called 2015 Nepal Earthquake Journals
Kathmandu, Nepal – April 28, 2015
11 pm
After 30 hours of flight over Afghanistan and Iran, my plane was put on hold over Kathmandu airport. I was sitting next to a BBC producer and she told me she’s been in the air for the past three days trying to get to here. She was turned back twice because the airport was shut down.
I met up with Sandeep Shah, who heads our India office, at the crowded airport, where international rescue crews and police units gathered everywhere…

This post is part of a series called Miyamoto in Haiti
Jon Buckley, a 32-year-old project engineer in our San Diego office, used his vacation and paid his own way to volunteer in Haiti for the firm’s nonprofit, Miyamoto Global Disaster Relief. Read his guest journal about his adventures – like eating BBQ goat, learning a few phrases in French and Creole and seeing the damage from a major earthquake for the first time in person. The highlight, though, was working on Miyamoto Relief’s newest project, the retrofit of a dangerous, 4,000-student school in the heart of Port-au-Prince.
February 2,…

This post is part of a series called Miyamoto in Haiti
Update: July, 2014 – Work continued throughout the month of June, with more holes being dug and the poles being installed. Throughout the beginning of the month, as school was ending, the community was very happy with the progress being made and saw that the contractors were working hard. When I spoke with community members, they appreciated not only the rehabilitation work but the fact that there were young men in the community who were benefitting from small jobs in digging out the foundation.…

With this recent earthquake in Chiang Rai, there is heightened concern regarding the community’s seismic resiliency. Whether a community leader, building owner or resident of the city of Chiang Rai, all stakeholders have a vested interest in mitigating the seismic risk facing the community, the city and the country.…

This post is part of a series called 2014 Liberia Earthquake Journals
Liberia, May 2, 2014
It’s 2:30 pm and the hot African sun bears down on us. Our plane is scheduled later today, but for now I face the blowing sea smell of the wind from the Atlantic Ocean. The beach is desolate, but absolutely wild and beautiful. It’s a pure honey brown sand beach in Buchanan in the county of Grand Bassa. My bare feet are in the sand with my business pants rolled up. I removed my tie hours ago. These things make sense in northern European…

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As CEO of the structural engineering company Miyamoto International, Kit is dedicated to making the world a better place. In Kit's words: our responsibility as engineers is to make buildings safer by sharing what we know around the world. Join his journey to make the world a better, safer place.